What happened
The consultations are over, and the count is not close. When President Isaac Herzog finished two days of meetings with the parties elected on October 27, factions representing 67 of the Knesset’s 120 members had recommended Gadi Eisenkot to form the next government. Forty-six recommended Benjamin Netanyahu. Seven — the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism — recommended neither.
Herzog announced the tally himself, and named the difficulty inside it in the same breath: “The results of the consultations may appear clear, but the authority vested in me by law is to determine who has the ability to form a government, and that is not entirely clear, given the mutual vetoes between the blocs and within the blocs themselves.” He said he would hold further personal talks with party leaders before deciding, pledging to “leave no stone unturned” in search of a stable government.
So a precision, because it matters: headlines on Saturday saying Herzog has handed Eisenkot the mandate are half a step early. The decision is announced, and every party in Jerusalem is treating it as settled. But the formal act — the assignment that starts the clock — takes place on Sunday, November 8. Until then, and until a new government is sworn in, Netanyahu remains prime minister, in a caretaker capacity.
Eisenkot is a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who held that post from 2015 to 2019, and now leads Yashar, the largest party of the four-party Jewish opposition bloc. The mandate he is about to receive makes him the first person other than Netanyahu to be handed the first attempt at a government since Netanyahu returned to office in 2022.
The count
The recommendations Herzog announced on Thursday:
| Recommendation | MKs |
|---|---|
| For Eisenkot — the Jewish opposition bloc (Yashar, B’Yachad, the Democrats, Yisrael Beitenu) | 48 |
| For Eisenkot — the Joint List | 11 |
| For Eisenkot — Ra’am | 8 |
| Subtotal — for Eisenkot | 67 |
| For Netanyahu | 46 |
| Neither (United Torah Judaism) | 7 |
| Total | 120 |
Two things about that table. First, a recommendation is a statement made to the president, not a coalition signature — a distinction the rest of this article is about. Second, Netanyahu’s shortfall sits inside his own camp: his bloc won 53 seats on October 27, but only 46 of them recommended him. The missing seven are United Torah Judaism, a fixture of his coalitions, which declined to recommend him for the first time in two decades, in the fight over exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service. Its representatives say the party’s future support depends on settling that question.
What a mandate is
Israel’s president is a head of state, not a head of government. After an election the president consults the parties and assigns the task of forming a government to one member of the Knesset who agrees to try. That member — the designee — must then assemble a coalition that can win the confidence of the Knesset. The working number is 61: a majority of the 120 seats.
The designee gets 28 days. The president can add up to 14 more.
If the first attempt fails, the ladder is fixed by law. The president may hand the task to a second member, who gets 28 days and no extension. If that fails too, the initiative moves to the Knesset itself: for 21 days, any 61 members can ask the president, in writing, to assign the task to a member they name, and that member gets 14 days. If nobody succeeds, the Knesset is dissolved and Israel votes again.
The problem inside the 67
Eisenkot’s 67 is a majority for one purpose: it told the president who should go first. It is not yet 61 people willing to sit together as a government.
Start with his own side. Three of the four Jewish opposition parties — Eisenkot’s Yashar, Bennett and Lapid’s B’Yachad, and Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu — have ruled out joining a coalition with the Arab parties. Liberman has ruled out more than that: a government that depends on Arab support at all. And Eisenkot himself, like Netanyahu, has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties.
Then the Arab parties’ own position. The Joint List recommended Eisenkot, and said its decision reflected public demands to prevent Netanyahu’s return to power. But it has ruled out joining his government. Its chairman, Yousef Jabareen, has said the party would consider supporting a government from outside — voting with it in the Knesset without taking cabinet seats. Ahmad Tibi, a senior Joint List lawmaker, gave the purpose to the Associated Press: “We want to do things that we did not do in the past in order to remove this criminal government.” Ra’am, the smaller Arab party, recommended Eisenkot as well. Neither Arab party’s recommendation is a commitment to join a coalition.
Eisenkot’s stated answer to this arithmetic is a national emergency government. He has said he is working to form one, and that any party willing to accept his core principles could join it, immediately or at a later stage. His party has urged Herzog to hand him the mandate as soon as possible. Whether the emergency frame can dissolve the vetoes stacked inside his own 67 is the negotiation of the next 28 days.
What happens next
The calendar from here:
- Sunday, November 8 — Herzog formally assigns the mandate to Eisenkot, and the 28 days begin: running to December 6, or to December 20 if the full 14-day extension is granted.
- Tuesday, November 10 — the new Knesset is sworn in. Its members are expected to elect a speaker; the incumbent is Amir Ohana, of Netanyahu’s Likud.
- If Eisenkot fails — the task passes to a second member for 28 days, then to the Knesset’s 21-day process, then, if nothing holds, to new elections.
- Throughout — Netanyahu stays in the prime minister’s office, as caretaker, until the day a successor government is sworn in.
Netanyahu, waiting
Netanyahu is, for the first time in this run, the fallback. His Likud remains the largest single party, with 27 seats, and his bloc holds 53. But when his own camp was counted, it produced 46 recommendations — because a party that has sat in his governments for decades decided, this once, to sit on its hands.
If Eisenkot succeeds, Netanyahu leaves the prime minister’s office with two proceedings still running, both of them matters of public record. In Israel, his corruption trial — on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which he denies — is unfinished. And the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for him, issued on November 21, 2024, remains outstanding.
As caretaker prime minister, he keeps the office while his replacement is attempted. If the attempt fails at every rung of the ladder, the last word belongs to the voters again — in a new election, with Netanyahu still in the chair.
Our read
PoliVion covers Israel’s politics for one stated reason: the government in Jerusalem is underwritten in Washington. American money sustains it and American protection shields it, and the network that moves that money through American elections is the subject of this site. What happens to Netanyahu is, in part, an American story.
Consider what has happened to him anyway. The man the United States shielded from an international arrest warrant — sanctioning the court that issued it and receiving him in Washington again and again while it stood — could not be shielded from his own voters or his own parliament. His bloc lost its majority on October 27. His allies of decades declined to recommend him. The first mandate of the new era is going to the former chief of staff who leads the alliance formed to replace him.
But a count is not a government. The 67 was assembled around a single shared purpose — stopping Netanyahu — and it contains parties that will not sit with each other, parties that will not join at all, and a designee whose promised national emergency government cannot yet be counted to 61. Herzog saw it clearly and said it in his own statement: mutual vetoes, between the blocs and within them.
The next 28 days decide what the 67 was: a coalition, or only a count. If Eisenkot converts it, Israel has a prime minister not named Netanyahu for the first time since 2022 — and the warrant, the trial, and everything else that has been waiting outside the prime minister’s door will still be waiting on the other side of it.
Sources: The Media Line (November 5, 2026); Associated Press (November 5-6, 2026); AFP, via The Indian Panorama (November 6, 2026); Algemeiner (November 6, 2026); The Guardian (November 2026); Israel Democracy Institute, on the president’s role in assigning the task of forming a government (2026); Basic Law: The Government; International Criminal Court, Pre-Trial Chamber I (November 21, 2024); Central Elections Committee certified results (November 2026), as reported by The Media Line and the Associated Press.
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